Trevor-Roper said; “There is only the history of the Europeans in Africa, The rest is largely darkness." Unfortunately history books of Africa, besides obvious Biblical and other historical materials, as well as histories of Greeks and Romans in Africa of which there is an abundance, and other materials from civilizations that ventured into Africa, such as China's Zheng He, the Assyrian etc and Babylonian trade, didn't begin to be published in quantity until the mid-20th century. The problem isn't one of did history occur; instead it is one of the paucity of written materials for historians to read.
Some historians base works on archival materials while others venture farther to find data. Primary sources are important as are critical analysis, interpretation and fields as diverse as archeology, anthropology and hydrology (fascinating research into a verdant Sahara with a lot of water exists). Trevor-Roper was an Oxford historian who probably didn't venture much into the field. Maybe for Trevor-Roper if there were no African history books written that he knew about in 1965 about Africans, African history was darkness.. A very reflective New York Times article of the 1970s provided politically correct criticism of Roper and the topic of the history of African history writing. https://www.nytimes.com/.../the-history-the-slaveholders...
